The Guardians of Galaxy's End
by E for Emma
Summary: Japan is great for senshi, but surely it can't be the only place they live in! Here's a story about a group of senshi in training who live in a different locale...
1. Act 1

Act 1

The sun rose over Seaside Boarding School, a lovely school sandwiched between the cities of Santa Cruz and Monterey, California, bathing its cluster of Spanish Mission-style buildings in refreshing, renewing light and starting a brand new day. Aroused by either their internal clocks or loud artificial alarm clocks, the students of this particular school began to awaken and go about their normal morning routines. It was a bright, crisp September day, meaning that the school year as a whole was still a fairly new concept.

"Nngh," muttered Mary Patterson as she heard her alarm clock sound. She lifted her head, which seemed to take a great deal of effort, to see what time it was before deciding if it was indeed time to wake up. When she saw the time, she yawned and sluggishly moved out of her bed, accidentally knocking over a hardcover book in the process, making it fall onto her vulnerable feet. "Ow!" She knelt down and retrieved the book, placing it back on her bed. She shuffled over to her wardrobe and selected a navy blue T-shirt with a funny slogan on it, a pair of well-worn blue jeans, and Birkenstock sandals, effortlessly slipping into all of these items within seconds.

She left her suite, her blue backpack balanced on just one shoulder, and stopped at her sink to brush her teeth and her slightly wavy brown hair. As she did this, one of her suitemates came out of her room, yawning. The girl in question was Kayla Brown, an impossibly tall girl (nearing 6 feet) who was the star of the softball team.

"Morning," Kayla said to Mary. "How was the show last night?"

"Awesome," Mary responded. She heard her own stomach rumbling and laughed nervously. "Excuse me."

"It's okay," Kayla replied sheepishly as Mary moved away from the sink, towards the door to the room. "See you later!"

"See you!" Mary replied, throwing the door open and doing a little jump into the hallway. The feeling of being a senior was still sinking in for Mary, although she was now allowed to wear casual clothes of her choosing every day, something she dreamt of ever since she was invited to Seaside. She walked down the hall of Kell Hall's fourth floor, carrying herself proudly, beaming with the power that being a senior carries, watching as a pack of 9th grade girls walked by and looked at her in awe.

Then, as if the universe was placing a balance on the other side of Mary's scales, she promptly ran into a wall, shattering her power for the time being as the 9th graders took a moment to laugh at her. Rubbing her aching nose, Mary looked down so her hair would conceal her face and walked briskly the rest of the way to the elevator. When the door opened, she was able to place one foot over the elevator's threshold before a hard plastic object bumped into her soft, vulnerable leg.

"Ow!" Mary exclaimed, looking over to find the offending object and discovering a hard plastic violin case, attached to the hand of a Japanese girl who immediately looked shocked.

"I'm so sorry!" the girl exclaimed, her face reddening. "Please forgive me."

"No, it's okay." Mary put her right hand on the elevator doors, which were starting to close, and motioned with her free hand for the violin-toting girl to enter first. She did, nodding slightly, and Mary jumped in right as the doors closed. The elevator shuddered on its way down to the ground floor, which made Mary nervous, but the journey was soon complete and she was able to race off towards the student center and its cavernous dining hall.

When Mary shoved open the double doors to the student center, she immediately turned left and walked up to the row of newspaper boxes, searching for her beloved hometown paper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel. She smiled upon finding it and fed two quarters into its money slot, opening up the box and retrieving the paper on the top.

"Oh no, not again," she heard a girl standing before the San Francisco Chronicle box mutter as she counted out her coins and came up short. "I must've dropped that last dime…"

"Oh, here," Mary offered, searching through her wallet's coin pocket and discovering a dime. "Take it," she added, turning to look at the girl for the first time. She was a fairly tall African-American girl with friendly brown eyes and with a shaved head. Mary smiled brightly as the girl took her dime and fed it into the Chronicle's box.

"Thank you," the girl replied.

"No problem!" Mary hastily replied. _'Oh no, did that sound too snobby?'_ she asked herself, grimacing slightly as she folded her paper under her arm and walked into the dining hall. She retrieved her Seaside Dining Card from within her wallet and gleefully hopped in line, examining today's breakfast offerings and feeling even hungrier as she did so. The way the lamps reflected off the glossy frosting of a cinnamon roll batch hypnotized Mary for a moment, just long enough not to realize the line was moving.

"Hey, can we walk, please?" a female voice behind her said gruffly, making her snap back to reality. She whirled around, ready to apologize, and got a good look at the aggressor. The aggressor was obviously an underclassman because she was wearing a uniform, but she also had extremely wavy brown hair with bleached blonde highlights and kind blue eyes.

"Sorry!" Mary said, slightly exasperated, as she shuffled forward and picked up a plastic tray. The aggressor did not reply. _'How rude! I apologized to her and everything…' _Mary sighed, shaking her head, and gingerly put a white plate onto her tray, a plate that was soon loaded up with hash browns, scrambled eggs, a cinnamon roll, and a biscuit.

"Got enough there?" a girl with stick-straight blonde hair, brown eyes, and the air of a supermodel, asked upon seeing Mary's tray, adding a little cackle to the mix.

"Look who's talking," Mary replied, looking at the model's plate and seeing a giant, fluffy omelet. "I think that may be one of my pillows! I've been looking for it!" she added, imitating the model's cackle before sauntering over to the cash register. She handed her dining card over to the hairnet-wearing dining hall employee and looked around for a possible place to sit.

"Thank you, have a nice day," the employee replied in a hollow voice, giving Mary back her card. Mary graciously took the card, smiled, and shuffled out of the way so the model could pay for her giant omelet.

"Ah, someone took my favorite table," Mary lamented upon seeing a group of fresh-faced 7th graders commandeering her table. "Oh, but the one next to it is open!" Feeling energized, she hustled over to the empty table, passing by the 7th graders on the way and picking up pieces of their conversation.

"Are you excited about section placement today?" one girl asked another.

"Definitely!" the other girl, a tan girl with platinum blonde hair and bright blue eyes, replied in a soft Southern accent. Mary briskly walked past them and seated herself at the very next table, laying out her newspaper and setting her tray in just the right place so she could read and eat at the same time.

"This seat taken?" Mary heard a male voice ask just as she opened the newspaper, doubling its size on the table. She looked up, assuming a deer-in-headlights sort of look, and saw that Joshua Haygood wanted to sit down across from her. She took too long to respond to him, though, because she was too busy checking him out from head to toe. "Hello in there?"

"Oh! Um, no, you can, you can sit here if you want to," Mary stuttered, gesturing for Joshua to sit down so she could look at him some more under the pretense of staring off into space. She drank in the sight of his dirty blond hair, just disheveled enough to be attractive, his mysteriously light blue eyes, that dusting of freckles across his nose…A contented smile crept onto her face, even though she hadn't taken a bite of her food yet.

"So, did you do the pre-calc homework last night?" Joshua asked, trying to reel Mary back in from her dream world.

"Huh? Oh! Um, I think so!" Mary exclaimed. _'Yes, you did, Mary! You did it first thing after school let out! It was about graphing!' _"Yes! Yes, I did it. It was easy! Graphing is easy." _'Shut up!' _

"Yeah, it was easy. I have this bad feeling, though, that Ms. Marshall is going to sneak in a really tough concept soon just to trip us up," Joshua said forebodingly.

"Hm, maybe you're right," Mary replied, stabbing a piece of scrambled egg with her fork. "I hope not, though. I'm not very good at math." She quickly popped the egg into her mouth and chewed on it thoughtlessly.

"Well, you know I can give you tutoring if you need it," Joshua offered kindly, almost making Mary cough up the egg in shock. She aborted the cough, though, and managed to swallow the egg before speaking.

"You'd do that?" Mary asked for clarification.

"Sure, why not? I might as well put my knowledge to good use." Joshua smiled, and it was only then that Mary noticed the only things gracing his tray were a cinnamon roll and a glass of milk.

'_I'm eating more than a guy!' _Mary observed, cringing slightly as she mindlessly pushed her hash browns around. She decided to just glance at her paper instead of trying to talk for a while.

"So, how about the game this Friday?" Joshua asked casually.

"What about it? Not going," Mary answered.

"I figured. You've never been a football person," Joshua pointed out.

"Correct. I'm a baseball girl, through and through," Mary replied, giving a thumbs-up sign.

"How about we play hooky from the football game and go get a coffee or something?" Joshua suggested. Mary's eyes widened in shock and her eyes shot up from the paper to meet Joshua's.

"Are you serious?" she asked in an oddly deep voice.

"Sure, why not?"

"Well, my show doesn't come on Friday nights…I can just do homework over the weekend…" Mary tapped her index finger to her lips as she thought aloud. "Sure! I'll do it!"

"Cool. I'll see you at the coffee shop at eight," Joshua said before peering at his watch. "I gotta go. See you!" He took the rest of his cinnamon bun and left the table, leaving Mary alone with her thoughts and overly active imagination. Her loneliness didn't last long, however, because soon enough the bell rang to signal the beginning of the school day. She folded up her newspaper, shoved it into her backpack, and took her breakfast tray over to the steam table for cleaning before leaving the student center altogether and walking down the path to the two school buildings.

The Upper School, the larger of the two buildings, was where she was headed, specifically to her first-period painting class, a relaxing, mellow class where other students frequently brought in music to listen to and the teacher would eat her breakfast inside. Mary thought of the project she was waist-deep in, an assignment to copy the iconic painting _The Scream _onto a ceiling tile using tempera paint, and sighed. The project just seemed like it would never end to her. Even though she faced the prospect of a seemingly never-ending art project, though, she was happy.

In what appeared on the surface to be a beautiful whitewashed steeple, complete with a large bronze bell and a blue dome at the top, a pallid woman wrapped in a black sheet sat on a throne and gazed apathetically into a crystal ball. She let out a sigh, preparing to get up and move, when suddenly the crystal ball pulsated and revealed a hazy image of Mary walking to class. The woman's black eyes grew in anticipation as the crystal ball turned red.

"Yes!" she hissed, pumping a fist in the air. "It finally found one. I knew this ball was good for _something_." A crimson jewel between her eyes flickered for a moment and began shining. "Now to find a suitable creature for possession." She touched her index finger to her jewel and scanned the image of Mary until she found an earthworm writhing on the sidewalk. Mistaking it for a snake, the woman touched it, feeling as some of her power was transferred to the worm.

Standing up from her throne and gazing out of a small window into deep space, the woman's lips curled into a smile.

"Sailor Sedna," she declared to the stars. "I'm coming for you."


	2. Act 2

Act 2

"It's a beautiful day today!" Ms. Winters, the eternally chipper young painting teacher, announced as soon as her class began. "I've decided that we can work on our ceiling tiles tomorrow. Let's go paint outside!" The class cheered at the news of not having to paint ceiling tiles, which involved filling all of the little crevices with paint and occasionally dirtying clothing with the dust. Ms. Winters set off gathering watercolor kits and special watercolor paper, nodding her head and making her mane of chocolate-colored curls bounce about.

'_Looks like today's gonna be a good day,' _Mary mused as she put away the tempera materials she fetched before the change in venue. She quietly followed behind the rest of the class, with the more excitable, talkative people producing more than enough noise to balance her silence out, outside the school building.

"The garden is so overdone," Ms. Winters said, waving her hand at it dismissively as she passed by. She cast her glare on the front area of the school, featuring the athletic complex, the front gate, and the road running parallel to the school itself, and a look of pure inspiration crossed her face. "To the front of the school!" she cried out, pointing to the front area as if she was discovering a new continent. The kids chatted excitedly about this snap decision and eagerly followed Ms. Winters to a grassy field within sight of all three landmarks.

Mary took a watercolor kit, a piece of paper, a cupful of water, and a paintbrush and found an isolated place to sit so she could concentrate on the task at hand. She took a fleeting glance over her shoulder and saw that nobody was around.

"That's more like it," she commented quietly, sighing and looking around for something to paint before noticing the way that the foliage across the road seemed to peek through the wrought-iron bars of the school's gate. Smiling contentedly, she dipped her brush into her water and began to paint.

As Mary painted, becoming engrossed in her task, a woman with long black hair walked by, thoughtlessly attempting to light a cigarette with a malfunctioning lighter. She was dressed in business casual and muttered a stream of obscenities at her lighter, which made Mary perk up. She looked over and immediately recognized the cursing woman as Ms. Kurosawa, her guidance counselor, so she decided to greet her.

"Hi, Ms. Kurosawa!" Mary said cheerfully, waving, but Ms. Kurosawa didn't reply. Instead, she turned back to the lighter, which flickered for a few moments before finally lighting and allowing a victorious Ms. Kurosawa to light her cigarette.

"Hi, Mary!" Ms. Kurosawa answered. "Skipping class?" she pseudo-joked.

"No! My painting class is out here today," Mary explained.

"That's nice," Ms. Kurosawa replied, artfully blowing a ring of smoke into the air. Mary looked in amazement at the ring for a moment before turning back to her work in progress. As she got back into her painting mood again, she noticed the presence of an earthworm near her feet. The way worms looked gave her the chills, so she withdrew her feet closer to her body for protection, an act that seemed to anger the creature. Shrugging off the oddity, she returned to painting, thinking everything was normal. This illusion was quickly shattered.

Within the blink of an eye, the earthworm grew to nearly 100 times its original size, a stature that terrified Mary. She dropped her painting and quickly lamented as it landed wet side up in the grass, but her lament ended in a hurry as a cut seared through the earthworm's face and opened to reveal two rows of sharp, gleaming teeth, something earthworms usually never had.

"Wh…wh…what is that!" Mary squealed, pointing to the freakish creature. Ms. Kurosawa frowned, dropped her cigarette, and stamped it beneath the sole of her shoe before frantically digging around in the pocket of her dress slacks. She looked nervous for a moment before finding what she was looking for—a grey-colored object that looked like a novelty pen.

"This isn't fair," Ms. Kurosawa muttered. "It wasn't meant to happen this way…" She sighed, momentarily shutting her eyes before opening them again, tightly grasping her grey pen, and raising it to the sky. "Charon Planet Power, Make Up!" Her fingernails sparkled and turned metallic grey as she took the pen and drew a glowing grey circle around her feet. The circle shone grey and engulfed her in mist for a moment. This whole time, though, Mary hadn't noticed a thing because she was busy trying to fight off the giant earthworm using nothing but her wits and painting supplies. She had already thrown the contents of her water cup at the horrendous thing, which seemed only to antagonize it even more.

"Charon Halt!" a woman who looked somewhat like Ms. Kurosawa, but who was wearing a completely different outfit, cried out as she leapt in front of Mary and held out her right hand. Immediately, the earthworm stopped moving, which allowed Mary to look at her rescuer for the first time. She had the same hair and eyes as Ms. Kurosawa, but she wore a shockingly skimpy sailor outfit with a grey miniskirt attached. Snow white gloves protected her hands, big grey boots protected her feet, she had a fancy grey bow jutting out from her chest, and she wore a gold tiara on her head with a grey jewel in the middle.

"Ms. Kurosawa?" Mary suggested, confused.

"Charon," the woman corrected. "Call me Charon."

"Can do…um…Charon," Mary said, still confused. "What on Earth is going on here? That's what I want to know!"

"Mary, do you have your cell phone with you?" Charon asked, looking progressively more nervous as she kept her eyes locked on the worm. Mary nodded yes and instinctively searched in her purse for her phone, bringing it out into the open.

"Good. Now, open it up and dial this number. Ready?" Shizuka waited for Mary to open her phone. "5, 4, 1."

"That's not a valid number," Mary pointed out.

"It doesn't need to be. Just dial 5-4-1 and hit send," Shizuka commanded calmly. Mary nodded slightly, dialed the three numbers in the correct sequence, and pressed send. Instead of the screen obediently telling her that it was dialing the number, it began to flash blue.

"What the…?" Mary began, dropping her phone just as a burst of water flew out. She clutched herself tightly, afraid that the water would be cold, and held her breath for a moment but felt nothing unusual. She let go of herself, tentatively opened one eye to see what had happened to her, and was shocked to discover that she was wearing gloves that were not on her hands before. Confused, she opened her other eye and had a good look at herself.

She was now wearing nearly the same outfit as that mysterious Charon woman, but with a few changes in color. Her blue chest bow was attached to a sea green circular brooch and she was wearing a blue skirt with two sea green lines. Her gloves were bordered with sea green bands and she wore blue ankle-length boots, but the most obvious and shocking change was to her hairstyle. Mary was, unfortunately, presently unaware of the short black hair that now graced her head.

"What happened to me?" Mary asked, her voice shaking.

"You transformed," Charon explained. "Using the magic within you and the cell phone to trigger it, you transformed into your guardian form. Mary, you probably won't believe this when I say it, though it's true. You are the guardian of a faraway planet called Sedna."

"Sedna…somehow, that name sounds familiar," Mary whispered. "How do I remember it, though?"

"Perhaps your past memories are returning now that you are in your Sailor costume," Charon replied.

"Sailor? Like in the Navy?" Mary asked, puzzled.

"You could say that," Charon said, chuckling slightly.

"So, what do I do with this outfit?" Mary queried, tugging at the hem of her short skirt.

"You use it to fight evil," Charon explained. "You should feel the magical power you have coursing through your blood now."

"But I don't know what to do! Do I just kick and punch?" Mary asked fearfully.

"I would recommend against kicking and punching. I would recommend using the powers you _know_ how to use," Charon said. Right as Charon finished giving her sage, yet strange, advice, the earthworm broke free from its curse and let out a terrible roar. Cursing quietly, Charon leapt aside, leaving Mary vulnerable to attack.

As soon as Mary saw the worm roar and look in her direction, she swore her heart stopped for a split second and her blood ran cold. She crouched down and shut her eyes, and in that moment it occurred to her that she knew what to do. Confident in herself, she stood back up and put her arms behind her, as if she were pretending to have wings. Charon stood nearby, smiling, as Mary slowly brought her hands forward.

"Sedna Drench!" Mary shouted, bringing her hands down forcefully. A wave of water rushed forth, overpowering the worm and making it disappear from sight for a moment. When it was gone, the worm lay writhing on the ground, obviously weakened by the attack. "Wow…I did that?" Mary asked in awe, taking a moment to do a victory dance. During this moment, however, the worm recovered from its weakened state and lunged out at her again.

"Charon HALT!" Charon commanded again, freezing the weakened worm again. She placed her hands overlapping on top of her chest, closed her eyes and exhaled softly. After exhaling, she opened her eyes again and balled her right hand into a fist, which she then used to remove what appeared to be a sword from within her body. Instead of having a blade like swords do, however, this sword had an oar for a blade. Mary looked thoroughly shocked and confused, wondering how on Earth Charon was able to do such a thing.

"Acheron Crossing!" Charon shouted, holding out the oar end of her sword to the worm, who was bathed in a shining light before turning into a tiny diamond-shaped object that flickered before disappearing altogether. She then turned to Mary, smiled warmly, and effortlessly placed the oar-sword back in her chest. "Well, that was quite a first battle, wasn't it?" she asked casually, pressing the brooch in the middle of her bow. She was enshrouded in grey ribbons for a moment before re-emerging as Ms. Kurosawa.

"Ms. Kurosawa!" Mary cried out. "You're…"

"I also have magical powers," Ms. Kurosawa casually explained. "This is why I knew so much about your own powers, Mary." She paused to allow these words to sink in and turned to leave the scene. Mary looked down at her hands, then at her outfit, feeling a sense of awe. The awe was soon interrupted, though, by a stream of questions that she desperately wanted answers for.

"S-so, is the monster still going to attack the school?" Mary asked quietly, pointing to where the worm once stood.

"No. Now, thanks to you, it won't attack anyone," Ms. Kurosawa replied.

"But you did most of the work," Mary protested.

"You were just as important as I was," Ms. Kurosawa said, wagging her index finger and turning to leave again.

"Wait!" Mary called out. "Why did this happen in the first place?"

"You don't need to know that yet," Ms. Kurosawa said rather coldly, both shocking and disgusting Mary.

"I don't need to know why my cell phone shot water at me and changed my outfit? I don't need to know why I can suddenly throw streams of water at giant earthworms with sharp teeth and the ability to roar? I don't need to know why you can apparently extract a sword from your chest without any pain? I don't need to know _any of this_?" Mary asked frantically, gesturing wildly whenever needed. "I think I need to know—and am authorized to know_—everything_!" Ms. Kurosawa stopped in her tracks, stared at the sky for a moment, and turned back to Mary.

"You do have the right to know _some_ things, I guess," Ms. Kurosawa replied quietly. "Press that button in the middle of your bow, okay?" Mary nodded and complied, watching as blue shining ribbons covered her body and she returned to her normal clothing and hairstyle.

"Tell me what I have the clearance to know," Mary said with a hint of bitterness.

"Now, Mary, I explained in brief what you are when your outfit changes. When your outfit changes, you become Sailor Sedna, the guardian of the planet Sedna, and you gain both her looks and her powers. Your hair changed color and style, you know. It looked really good." Ms. Kurosawa did not elaborate on exactly how the hair changed, but Mary touched her head anyway. "It's normal now." Mary looked disappointed. "Mary, there are a few other girls like you at Seaside, just waiting for their own powers to blossom. You know what your job is now?"

"No, what?" Mary asked.

"You are going to be their leader," Ms. Kurosawa announced. "Lead them, help them grow, protect them in battle…" She trailed off. "You'll see me a lot, though."

"Why so?" Mary queried, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, you see that attack I just did with my sword? I have to use that every time a monster comes along so it can go away forever," Ms. Kurosawa explained. "That's the short explanation and the only one you need right now." She paused.

"I…I don't know if I can lead them yet," Mary confessed. "I'm not very good at leading people to do anything," she added shyly. "Not even in group work during class."

"You're better than you think, Mary. You suffer from an inability to give yourself enough credit for anything," Ms. Kurosawa observed bluntly. "Besides, you won't be alone. As I just explained, I'll come along to your battles. I _have_ to." Seeing that Mary still wasn't assuaged, she walked over and patted her shoulder. "Please don't worry, Mary. You'll never have to face this alone." Suddenly, her face darkened. "Like I've had to." Mary bit her lower lip nervously in response. "I'll tell you the names of the girls who have similar powers and what they look like. From there, it'll be up to you to recruit them. Is that okay, Mary?"

"Um…" Mary began. "Yeah. Yeah, it'll be okay." She smiled wearily, hoping for a good future and wondering if she had any other as-yet-undiscovered powers.


End file.
